A July 27th editorial in the Miami Herald said that if the U.S. government does not prioritize special immigrant visas, our country will “repeat a shameful practice of abandoning friends when it leaves a war-torn country.”
The piece compared the plight of Iraqi refugees to that of their Vietnamese counterparts after the Vietnam War.
A recent decline in Iraqi admissions highlighted by the media brought the issue to the forefront. IRAP was cited as noting that no Iraqi SIV petitions were approved in the first week of July.
The Herald stated that if the U.S. continues to allow these Iraqis to be forgotten, “they will face a grim future, and probably a short one.”